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News of April 2012

This Update highlights the importance of planning within ongoing self-review aimed at improving student outcomes. It is intended to support schools and kura as they think about the next steps in their self-review cycle and to help them establish shared understandings about planning processes, expected outcomes, and achievement for priority groups.

The Linking Minds Scholarship is a prestigious international award for young teachers who identify themselves as emerging leaders.

The scholarship is sponsored by the British Council, the Ministry of Education, the New Zealand Teachers Council and the NZ-UK Link Foundation, and aims to recognise and promote effective teaching by providing international experience for teachers early in their careers.

This year there are 4 scholarships available in total for teachers or principals working in early childhood, primary, or secondary education.

Learning Media is piloting the use of embedded support in the audio versions of non-fiction texts from the School Journal, Junior Journal, and School Journal Story Library (years 5-6) and School Journal Story Library (years 7-8).

Embedded support is designed to assist students to use visual features, such as photographs and diagrams, to help them make meaning of the text.

The aim of including embedded support in audio is to help students to use the strategies highlighted in the audio file independently when they read other non-fiction texts.

Find out from these school stories how e-portfolios are helping students to take increasing responsibility for their own learning. Technology enables the use of a range of media - video, sound, and images, as well as text to show both the learning process and final products.To find out more you can also join the e-portfolio discussion in the VLN.

This Update introduces the new guidelines Selecting texts for students in years 4-8
When teachers are selecting texts from a wide range of sources, many of the texts don't have information on reading year levels.
The guidelines include a framework designed to help teachers select texts at an appropriate level of difficulty and to identify the characteristics likely to challenge or support learners. The framework can be used with texts from sources such as magazines, newspapers, books, and the Internet.Find out more....